


a dame who knows the ropes (isn't likely to get tied up)

by notahotlibrarian



Series: Evil Author Day 2021 [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Howlies: the next gen, Howling Commandos - Freeform, SHIELD runs on nepotism and arc-reactor power
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29479986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notahotlibrarian/pseuds/notahotlibrarian
Summary: In 1943, a band of men came together to follow not Captain America, but some little punk from Brooklyn and his best friend. Bound by a brotherhood many historians have studied but few truly understand, they create an unlikely family once the war ends.In 2020, the latest generation of Howling Commandos have joined up with SHIELD - some in legitimate agent roles, some in more...wildcard functions. Darcy Lewis definitely falls into the latter category, and she's going to have a hell of a time running through SHIELD's halls...#EvilAuthorDay
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Brock Rumlow
Series: Evil Author Day 2021 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2165199
Comments: 31
Kudos: 150





	a dame who knows the ropes (isn't likely to get tied up)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm snowed in, I'm going through my rough drafts folder, and I'm posting anything that is complete enough to qualify as a chapter. If you like any of these, please comment!
> 
> The premise of this fic: Darcy Lewis is Dum Dum Dugan's grandaughter. Howlies aren't exactly known for "respecting authority" or "following the chain of command" or whatever nonsense in on the latest SHIELD memo.
> 
> Happy Evil Author Day, y'all.

STRIKE Alpha was waiting in Fury’s outer office when the second elevator door dinged, making Brock, his team, and Marilyn, Fury’s scary-competent secretary, all reach for concealed weapons.

As far as Brock knew, only Fury, Marilyn, Coulson, and a couple heads of other agencies had access to that elevator. Fury and Coulson were ensconced in the director’s office already, Marilyn was obviously not in the elevator, and as far as Brock knew SecNav and SecDef weren’t onsite.

  
  


Vanderheune, one of the agents who worked as an IT analyst, was duct-taped to a two-wheeled dolly, which was being pushed by a fucking  _ co-ed _ . The girl’s head was nodding along with whatever was blasting through her oversized headphones at an obnoxious volume as she nonchalantly wheeled Vanderheune across the office space towards Marilyn’s desk.

The dolly was almost as tall as she was, so Brock estimated her height at about five foot two. Dark curls piled messily on top of her head gave her another inch or so of height. Bright blue eyes were highlighted by the dark circles underneath them.

She had the look of someone who’d crossed multiple time zones in a short amount of time - the dark circles, slightly sallow skin and greasy hair, rumpled clothes. The oversized flannel shirt she was wearing over leggings was misbuttoned at the bottom, and her cardigan had a mysterious stain at the hem. Lint-covered leggings were tucked into non-regulation combat boots that were halfway unzipped and untied - like she’d taken them off and then shoved them back on in a hurry.

Even with all that, she was still college co-ed cute in a way that made Brock feel every single day of his forty-seven years: namely, old and tired.

Jack Rollins, his second-in-command, nudged him with his elbow. “She’s cute,” he murmured, low enough that only their knockoff serum-enhanced ears could hear.

“She’s young,” he murmured back. “Too young,” he added, when he saw Jack opening his mouth again.

“Nicky,” she playfully scolded. “Why is your IT analyst trying to fuck about in Dr. Foster’s files? In fact, why was IT even sent to our labs? It’s clearly stated in our contract that I will handle all network and tech setups.”

“What do you mean trying to fuck about in Foster’s files?” Fury asked.

The girl sighed and pulled a SHIELD-issued Starkphone out of her bra, passing it over to Fury. “He was trying to backdoor into our systems by hopping onto our closed network via his phone. Which, rude, is my trick. Son of Coul, did you tell IT about my trick?” she asked, turning a glare towards Coulson.

“No, Miss Lewis, I did not,” Agent Coulson reassured her with a put-upon sigh.

“Ugh, I bet those fuckers have my old iPod still, then,” she muttered to herself, and then snorted. “It’s kinda sad that you have, like, the best of the best and it took them  _ ten years _ to reverse-engineer what I made while I was bored on a four-hour flight,” she said with a laugh.

“And that necessitated...that?” Coulson said, gesturing to the man still duct-taped to the dolly.

“Pfft, no. I picked his pocket while Jane was yelling at him for touching the machines, cracked his encryption while he unloaded our new screens, saw that the data was routed not back into a SHIELD server but to a private one somewhere in Kyrgyzstan, and then tased him,” she said cheerfully. “Jane’s the one who taped him to the thing.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Fury muttered.

The girl laughed again. It was a brassy, Mae West kind of laugh, almost bigger than she was, and Brock tamped down on the urge to smile at it. “Oh, Nicky, you’re the one who headhunted us, not the other way around. You should’ve known what you were getting into.”

“Ooh, Miss Marilyn, do you still keep the Dum-Dums in your desk drawer?”

“Just for you, honey,” Marilyn said with a smile. “You want one?”

“Miss Marilyn, have I ever said no to a Dum-Dum?”

Marilyn had a canny little smile on her face that instinctively made Brock a little afraid. It was like a Black Widow smile dipped in sweet tea and obnoxiously orange lipstick. Judging by the way his team was shifting nervously around him, he wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the smile. “Not a single time in your life, honey. I know how Dum-Dum’s your favorite.”

The girl - whose name Brock still didn’t know - hopped up and sat on the edge of Marilyn’s desk and swung her feet like a little kid as she dug through the oversized bag of suckers. It took her a solid minute and a half to pick out a flavor, during which time he could hear Fury’s voice get louder as he and Coulson “talked” with Vanderheune.

The girl unwrapped her sucker and put it in her mouth, and then started playing on her phone. As she tapped away at her screen, Marilyn came around from behind the desk and started passing out the after-action forms to the Alpha team. “Since y’all are gonna get a late start thanks to this nonsense, let’s get y’all started on the forms.”

“Des sornettes! Des sornettes!” the girl said with a laugh.

“And you!” Marilyn said, planting her hands on her hips as she turned to look at the girl. “Get your ass off my desk, you little heathen!” she said with a fond laugh.

“But Miss Marilyn!” she said, giving the older woman a ridiculous fake pout. Next to him, Brock heard Jack snort.

“Don’t you Miss Marilyn me, missy! Off!” she said, flapping her hands at the younger girl as she sat back down at her desk.

* * *

The cute co-ed (he really needed to stop referring to her in his head that way, it was only making his highly inappropriate crush  _ worse _ ) gave Fury and Carter the kind of dead-eyed stare that would probably make anyone who wasn't a seasoned agent quake in their boots. 

Fury started to talk. “If Dr. Foster would-”

The other woman started to unroll the duct tape, the unsticking sound loud over the Director’s commanding tones. When he stopped talking, she paused in unrolling, the lab going quiet except for the low hum of machinery.

Fury attempted to speak again. “We need to discuss-”

_ RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP.  _ Cute co-ed continued to unroll tape, walking backwards away from them as she unspooled the duct tape further. It waved gently between her and the lab table, the lights reflecting off of the silver exterior.

“There are concerns-”

_ RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP.  _ The young woman arched a challenging eyebrow at him, an unspoken  _ I can do this all day _ heavily implied in her disdainful look.

“S _ uch  _ professionalism you’re showing here, Darcy,” Sharon cut in, her voice bitchier than Brock had ever heard it be. He glanced at Jack out of the corner of his eye and saw his second-in-command’s eyebrows rise towards his forehead, shock widening his eyes. In all the years they’d both known the former agent, they’d rarely heard her raise her voice - even when ops had gone FUBAR or R&D blew up the lab levels for the tenth time or prisoners had attempted to intimidate her by getting in her face and screaming at her. She wasn’t quite at Romanoff levels of cool detachment; it was more of a placidly calm demeanor that could handle anything thrown at it.

(It was what had made dating her so appealing - trying to figure out what it would take to heat up that WASP-y cool exterior and her show a bit of heat and passion. In hindsight, he’s not sure that he was ever successful in his goals...maybe that’s why he stayed with her for so long?)

Before he could spiral himself back into a depression over his former relationship with Sharon Carter and its horrible demise, he forced himself to focus back on Fury and the two women in some sort of standoff.

And boy, was he glad he did. What came next would make his entire  _ year _ .

“How about you suck my entire goddamned dick, Carter?” the other woman yelled, forcefully tossing the tape she was holding onto one of the metal lab tables.

Dr. Foster finally rolled out from underneath the machine she was working on. “Wait, Stuck-Up Carter is here? In my lab? Oh  _ hell  _ no,” she said feelingly as she climbed to her feet. “She’s on the list! Darcy, you told me they’d read the list and agreed to abide by it!”

Cute co-ed - Darcy - shrugged. “They signed the paperwork saying they had.”

Dr. Foster turned and gave Directory Fury an equally dead-eyed stare. “Strike one,” she said coldly, pointing at him menacingly with the screwdriver she held in her hand.

“Dr. Foster,” Sharon’s voice turned polite, pleading. “I am the liaison with the Avengers facility and both Mr. Stark and Prince Odinson have sent materials for your lab. If you’d just sign these intake forms, I can have everything delivered and set up for you by some of the R&D techs,” she offered, holding out a tablet and stylus.

Dr. Foster looked at the tablet, looked at her assistant, and then looked back at Sharon with an incredulous expression on her face. “Are you  _ stupid? _ ” 

“I beg your pardon?”

Foster ignored her and turned back to Darcy. “How in the actual  _ fuck _ did  _ she _ get the liaison position and not you?”

Darcy snorted. “Oh, I told Tony that there was not enough money in the world for me to herd those cats. Also, I’m pretty sure she got the job because Langley fired her for fucking a suspect and not even getting actionable intel out of it. In fact, I heard she gave away intel. But,” she said with a little sigh, “nepotism has always been the backbone of this agency and apparently screwing Captain America and screwing over your great-aunt’s legacy means that you get the dubious privilege of babysitting superheroes,” she said with a shrug.

From where he was standing in the back of the group, Brock could see a dull flush start to spread over the back of Sharon’s neck, a sign that her normal unflappable cool was starting to melt. He held his face in the most placid expression he could manage - one that he’d gained lots of practice holding while working as a triple agent embedded with Alexander Pierce - and tried not to let his glee at Sharon’s embarrassment show.

“Lewis!” Fury yelled, drawing both of the other women’s attention back to him.

Darcy Lewis - he finally had a full name - arched one slender eyebrow at Fury. “Tell me I’m wrong, Nicky,” she said, smirking wickedly.

“For fuck’s sake,” Brock heard Fury mutter under his breath. He was starting to wonder if that was the Director’s automatic response to dealing with this girl.

“Give me that,” Foster snarled. She took the tablet from Sharon, and Brock saw the blonde’s shoulders relax minutely.

Big mistake.

The moment Sharon relinquished the tablet, Foster threw it on the ground.  _ Violently _ . It landed with a screen-shattering crack and Foster did not wait but a moment before she stomped on it. Several times. 

Once the screen was completely ruined, the petite scientist gave a mighty kick, sending the tablet flying across the lab and into the wall. She threw her screwdriver after it with a yell of rage that made everyone but her assistant step back from the irate woman.

“Okay, Jane,” Darcy said, gently wrapping an arm around the other woman’s shoulders. “Why don’t you finish fixing the machine, and I’ll deal with all of this...nonsense,” she said, waving one hand in their general direction while she turned Dr. Foster towards where she had been working earlier with the other.

“Tell Carter that she can return  _ Prince Odinson’s _ ’-” on the name of the Avenger, the astrophysicist’s face twisted into a sneer, “gift with a note on it that says…” Foster’s voice trailed off as she twisted one hand sharply into a middle finger aimed right at the group still standing by the lab entryway. With that said, she dropped back down onto her creeper, grabbed a new screwdriver out of the toolbox, and slid back under the oversized machine.

He heard Darcy let out a long, frustrated-sounding exhale before she turned around and walked back over to them.  “Well, this is a meeting that should have been an email,” she said under her breath, low enough that only his serum-enhanced hearing allowed him to overhear it. He bit the inside of his cheek in an effort to stifle the laughter he wanted to give into.

Once she’d reached their little group, Darcy gave them all a steely-eyed stare that had Brock involuntarily straightening his shoulders and snapping into parade rest. Beside him, he felt Jack do the same.

“Director Fury,” Darcy said, her voice suddenly colder than he’d heard it be so far. “Dr. Foster and I have been in this lab for the last forty-six hours straight, trying to undo the mess your agents made of our equipment. In the future, if you’d like to speak with one of us, we’d prefer it if you request a meeting. Our digital calendars are both publicly available, and you have both our SHIELD and personal emails.” She gave him an icy smile before turning to Sharon. “ _ Miss  _ Carter,” she said, stressing the other woman’s lack of agent status with a mean little smirk (that Brock  _ definitely  _ should not have found as hot as he did), “if you had read over the pertinent documents on file with both SI and the Avengers Initiative, you would know that Prince Odinson is strictly banned from this lab and both of our private residences, along with any gifts, communiques, or other items from him. Please do not bring them or him here. This is your only warning on the matter. Any other materials from any other team members may be left with shipping and receiving. If they require a personal hand-off, please contact me and I will arrange either a pick-up or a drop-off with a third party. As Dr. Foster has stated, you are also  _ persona non grata  _ in this lab and at both of our personal residences. Oh, and Sharon?” she paused to give the other woman a smile sharper than one of Romanoff’s knives. “I hope you choke on it.”

With that said, she turned sharply on her heel and walked away.

There was a loaded silence that Fury ultimately broke. “Carter. My office.  _ Now _ .” he growled. His trench coat flared around him ominously as he stalked out of the lab. A silently fuming Sharon Carter followed him, her heels clicking on the laminate floors in a steady clip behind him.

“Guess we should...go then?” Jack said tentatively.

Folding his lips together, Brock nodded, and the two left the labs as well - but not before Brock took one last glance at the sassy little co-ed who he couldn’t quite get off his mind.

* * *

Jack and Brock barely made it into Brock’s office before the older man burst into almost hysterical laughter. He managed to get the door closed behind them before he leaned against it, shoulders shaking.

Jack gave him a worried look and Brock bent over and clutched his ribs, laughing so hard they ached. “Y’alright, mate?” he said, his Australian accent thickening.

“Her entire-” he laughed, “-goddamned-” he cackled like his  _ nonna _ , “-dick!”

A reluctant smile tipped up the corner of Jack’s mouth, breaking up his normal resting murder face. “I didn’t think anyone could hate Carter more than you, but…”

“Choke on it!” Brock wheezed, tears forming in the corners of his eyes from laughing so hard.

* * *

At 6:30 on Tuesday morning, Darcy let herself into Jane’s apartment down the hall from her own and prodded the groggy astrophysicist out of bed and into the shower.

“Why?” Jane whined from behind the shower curtain while Darcy started to unpack her bag of beauty tricks.

“Because the three times STRIKE Alpha has seen me, I’ve either a) acted like a five year old raiding candy from grandma’s house, b) cussed like a sailor at important people,” she said with an eyeroll, “and c) been twerking like a drunk sorority girl at a Sig Nu kegger. As for you, they saw you throw a temper tantrum like a nap-deprived toddler. Neither one of us had washed our hair in like, a week,” Darcy listed off as she arranged her makeup brushes on the counter. “So we are going to look like the kick-ass, multiple degree-wielding, professional adult ladies that we are so maybe they’ll take us seriously and this won’t be a repeat of Tromso.”

Jane winced as she rinsed the shampoo out of her hair. Tromso had been a bit of a clusterfuck. It became very obvious very quickly that SHIELD had pulled some strings to have Jane stationed there, and several of the other scientists in residence resented that and treated Jane - and by extension, Darcy - like they were spoiled little brats who’d slept their way to better lab space. Unfortunately, Darcy and Jane were so stressed about Thor and pissed about their still-missing data from New Mexico that they didn’t behave much better. Aliens landing in New York had been a blessing in disguise because it was an excellent excuse for them to get the hell out of Tromso and back to the States to study that portal.

“Fair enough,” Jane agreed. “What should I wear?”

Darcy hummed in thought for a moment. “Gray conference suit, with that plum top?” she suggested. 

Jane perked up at that. “So I don’t have to shave my legs?” she asked happily. That suit came with skinny-cut trousers.

“Nah. But you have to wear heels.” 

Jane groaned dramatically, and Darcy laughed. “I hate heels,” Jane grumbled as she worked conditioner through her hair.

Darcy huffed. “Heels are a psychological weapon against men,” she said briskly. “There are no women on STRIKE Alpha-”

“That’s problematic as fuck,” Jane interjected.

“I know,” Darcy agreed. “But, that means that most likely, these guys won’t be expecting take-charge ladies. They’re used to the nerds in R&D who flinch anytime they leave the fluorescents in the lab and have only dealt with explosions under controlled settings. Also, I’m pretty sure that Tasha has trained all the old agents to be subconsciously terrified at the click of heels. Like Pavlov’s dogs and bells, but with more stabbing.”

Jane laughed at that. “If she hasn’t, Maria Hill probably did.” There was a brief bit of silence as Jane finished washing and stepped out of the shower. Uncaring of her nudity - she and Darcy had lived together long enough that there were very few, if any, boundaries left between them - she dried off while Darcy put face lotion on.

“So how is this going to go?” Jane asked curiously. Ever since the second attempted lab break-in that had been stopped by them, and not their ineffectual, often SHIELD-provided security (Freiburg, 2014), Jane deferred to Darcy on all security matters. Darcy had grown up with an extended family that worked security, and had picked up quite a bit of knowledge from them. A number of cousins and uncles had stopped by their various labs to do pro bono security checks over the years, and Jane trusted Darcy far more than she’d ever trust SHIELD.

“We’re meeting in a conference room. I don’t want them in your lab until I’ve finished running background checks,” Darcy said.

“I thought your clearance was high enough to read their files?”

“It is, but some of the pre-Triskelion stuff has been scrubbed. I’ve got bots crawling through the leaked files, but it’ll be another day or so before those turn up anything.”

“So, conference room. I’m assuming that I’ll talk about my research some?”

“Yeah. Make it as brainy as you want - don’t dumb it down for these guys. You’ll also need to talk about your conferences - how many, where, travel and housing needs. I’ll talk about cybersecurity, our protocols for deliveries, and the list.”

“Sounds good,” Jane said. 

Game plan decided, the two women fell into a rhythm they’d perfected over the last three years of extensive conference attendance. Jane blow dried her hair and pinned it into a passable chignon while Darcy did her own makeup. Jane ate a Pop-Tart and mentally reviewed what she was going to say while waiting on Darcy to finish.

Once Darcy was glammed up with everything but her lipstick, Jane sat on the toilet so Darcy could do her own makeup. (Jane was utter crap at doing her own makeup - she never wore it on a day-to-day basis - so Darcy volunteered to do it for conferences and major events.) Once Jane’s face was done, Darcy started unrolling the hot sticks out of her own hair while Jane went to her room and got dressed. She threw a change of clothes into a tote bag, making sure that she had a pair of comfortable flats to change into after the meeting was over.

Once Jane was dressed and packed, she went back to the bathroom to check on Darcy. The other woman had fixed her hair and was shimmying into a pair of black tights when she walked back in. 

Jane glanced at the outfit Darcy had laid out for herself and whistled. “Going full whats-her-face, I see,” she commented wryly after seeing the black, lace-up boots.

“Bettie Page?” Darcy asked, smirking at Jane as she adjusted her bra. “Would I do that?”

“Use your boobs as a weapon? Absolutely,” Jane said dryly. “Now hurry up, we’ve got to load everything in the car still.”

Three trips up and down their stairs later, Jane and Darcy had loaded up the back of their SHIELD-issued SUV with three boxes of books and scientific journals, four large insulated cooler bags of snacks and drinks, and two gym bags with backup clothes for each of them. Darcy navigated them through DC’s morning rush hour traffic with the kind of swearing and swerving reserved for a  _ Fast & Furious  _ movie, to Jane’s amusement.

They arrived at the parking garage at 8:30, which theoretically gave them enough time to drop their gym bags in the lab and grab coffee before heading to conference room 117 to meet with the STRIKE team.

However, that plan went tits up from the moment they crossed into the building. The security guard working the front desk that day was overly zealous and insisted on running their security badges through the systems multiple times because he just couldn’t believe that Darcy’s was legitimate. (He just couldn’t reconcile that Darcy, who looked like a senatorial call girl in her fitted cashmere sweater, faux fur coat, and slutty boots, outranked most of the STRIKE teams. It wasn’t her fault he had never interacted with someone with an F-level clearance.) Finally, after an irate Jane threatening to smack him and a call up to Miss Marilyn, he let them through. They made it through security only to find that the coffee line was atrociously long, so they skipped that and hopped in an elevator instead, only to have the elevator stop at  _ every. damn. Floor. _ By the time they made it to the 48th floor, they were all but sprinting down the hall to the conference room.

  
  
  
Brock glanced at his watch again. The astrophysicist and her assistant were late. He wasn’t surprised by that - the assistant seemed like the flaky type, and the doc seemed to have her head stuck in her research like all the other squints - but he was still annoyed by their tardiness. 

He glanced at his watch again before looking over his team. Jack Rollins, his Australian second-in-command, was sitting at his left at the conference table, reading over something on a tablet. 

The only person other than Jack who seemed to be waiting quietly was Hector Gutierrez, his sniper. Gutierrez was incredibly patient though, even outside of being a sniper. He’d just transferred to Alpha about six months ago after he’d returned from paternity leave. He tended to keep his opinions to himself, but Brock often caught him watching the younger men on the team with a kind of exasperated amusement - like a parent watching his kids, almost.

“What a misogynistic little dickbag,” Dr. Foster sniped as she and her assistant bustled into the room, carrying more bags than Brock thought necessary and still wearing their coats. “Put him on the list,” she instructed Darcy, gesturing vehemently. “I don’t want him escorting any of our stuff up.”

“You got it boss lady,” Darcy nodded, fishing a tablet out of her oversized bag and swiping at it with a red-tipped nail. The two women ignored the Alpha team entirely as they both peered at the tablet, Darcy typing one-handed one the screen at a speed that somewhat amazed Brock.

“Stick a fork in his brachial artery, cuz he’s done,” Darcy announced after a moment, setting the tablet down on the table so she could take off the truly ridiculous coat she was wearing. 

“If you ladies are ready to begin…” Brock’s voice trailed off stupidly as Darcy’s jacket came all the way off, revealing what she had underneath. 

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, were those curves real? She looked like Sophia fucking Loren, wearing a clingy red sweater tucked into a black pencil skirt that nipped in at her tiny waist before gliding over the curve of her hips. As she twisted to hang her coat over the back of her chair, Brock (and the rest of Alpha) got an excellent view of the ripe, round curve of her ass.

“Holy god,” someone muttered under their breath, and Brock had to internally agree. She propped one knee on the rolling chair to hold it in place, revealing the wickedly gleaming heeled boots she wore and pulling the skirt even tighter across her thighs. Someone else whined, low in their throat, and Brock wasn’t entirely certain it wasn’t him.

“ _ Madre de Dios _ , TKO, take it down a notch before you kill my team. I just got ‘em trained to clean their weapons the way I like.” Gutierrez’s lightly accented voice cut through the space.

Darcy whirled around, and Brock’s eyes were drawn towards her red, red mouth, stretched wide in a grin. “Hubby!” she squealed, skipping around the end of the table where she and the doctor had sat to come and hug Gutierrez. He laughed as she jumped on him, wrapping her arms around him and hugging him while Hector picked her up off the ground and spun her around.

[something else happens]

Darcy glanced sideways at her boss. “So much for being professionals, huh?” she asked wryly. 

"Screw it, I’m taking my heels off,” Dr. Foster pronounced, hopping up to sit on the conference table. 

Jane, still perched on top of the conference table, gave a rapid-fire, fifteen minute talk on her research, the papers she was publishing and/or presenting in the upcoming year, and a semi-polite request for future help moving heavy equipment. Then Darcy stepped forward and took over the presentation.

“Hi, I’m Darcy Lewis. My official title is data manager, though I also manage this one’s sleep and lunch schedule too,” she said with a little smile as she jerked a thumb towards Jane. A few of the Alpha guys cracked smiles, but the two at the top of the rank maintained their slightly murder-y unimpressed gazes. Sliding her eyes over to Hector, who smiled at her encouragingly, she continued on in her opening spiel.

“I handle all of Dr. Foster’s research and reference requests, her professional calendar, any logistics for shipping and travel, and data security. We’ve had seventeen attempted breaches on Dr. Foster’s digital files since I started working for her. I’d like to sit down with your cyber expert - [name], right?” At his nod, she continued speaking. “-and discuss firewalls, cloud storage, secondary and tertiary storage, and server needs sometime in the near future.”

“I’ll email you my availability,” [name] said, making a note on his own tablet.

“Sounds good,” Darcy said. 

She checked her notes and then moved onto her next point. “Now, logistics. I’ll work with whoever is running point on our conference security detail to book hotel rooms, flights, et cetera, whenever the need arises, so there’s not much to discuss there. Now, our shipping and receiving logistics are a bit more complex.”

“How so?” the commander in charge of the unit asked. His voice was gruff, and he frowned at Darcy when she looked over at him.

“My tech is all proprietary,” Jane interjected. “Either I designed and fabricated it, or I designed it and had it made by To….I mean, a mechanic we know,” she said, editing her statement after a pointed cough from Darcy. “The fewer eyes and hands on it, the less likely it is to be copied.”

“Which means that we’ll need a designated staff member to sign for our packages whenever we can’t. Ideally, one of us would go down and do it, but there will be moments when neither Dr. Foster nor I can leave the lab. I’d like to have a person in receiving and a person on STRIKE Alpha who can sign for our things.”

“I’ll do it,” Hector volunteered. “If that’s alright with you, Commander,” he added after a moment, glancing over at his boss.

“Fine,” Rumlow agreed after a moment. “I’d suggest Nancy Chen in receiving - she handles all of our equipment orders.”

“She makes sure we get the good toys first,” Rollins interjected, grinning at Darcy. She internally squee’d a bit at his cute Australian accent, but forced herself to focus.

“Nancy Chen,” she repeated, writing it on her tablet. She’d send her an email later and see if their plan would work for her, as well, before marking her down as a yes.

“I’d like to evaluate your lab for security threats,” Rumlow said. “And the both of you need to go through an evacuation seminar, along with the evasion, hostage, and basic self-defense courses.”

“Or,” Darcy said, dragging the word out as she glanced at Jane, arching an eyebrow in query. Jane nodded in response, and Darcy glanced slyly at Hector before looking at the commander. “We could run an E&E? I’ve already got the Foxtrot-seven-niner and the Theta-zero-four-Alpha forms filled out for it,” she said, pulling a manila folder out of her handbag and sliding it across the table to where Rumlow and Rollins were sitting.

Rumlow narrowed his eyes at her. “You don’t have the clearance for these forms,” he said.

“Are you sure about that?” Darcy replied, smirking at him.

He frowned and flipped through the pages, his eyes widening a miniscule amount when he got to the last page and saw that Director Fury and Deputy Director Coulson had already signed off on running the drill on Friday, three days from then.

“You got us the new ICERs? Wicked,” Rollins said as he read one of the pages Rumlow had discarded.

“R&D hasn’t even approved those for testing yet,” [name] said.

“Eh, I cashed in a favor,” Darcy said, shrugging. One of her sort-of cousins worked in weapons testing, and had easily agreed to let Alpha have ICERs for ‘their little dick-measuring contest,’ as Boom-Boom had put it, in an exchange for Darcy to ‘kick their entire arses,’ (her words, not Darcy’s).

  
  


* * *

“C’mon, I want Boom Boom to kit you out,” Darcy said, tugging Jane towards the elevator. She swiped her key card and punched in the number for an R&D floor different from their own.

“Boom Boom?” Jane repeated dubiously.

“Yeah, Vivienne? You remember, my French cousin who always sends me those good lavender soaps.”

“I didn’t know she worked for SHIELD,” Jane said.

“She wasn’t really given a choice,” Darcy muttered under her breath as the elevator chimed their arrival.

Darcy led Jane down the glass walled hallway to Vivienne’s lab. On the other side of the glass, an ethereal-looking blonde was hunched over a circuit board, carefully soldering. Darcy waited until she had finished and set the soldering iron down before knocking on the glass. Vivienne glanced up at the noise, an annoyed look on her face until it registered who had interrupted her concentration. She waved them in, and Darcy badged the door open.

“Mon chou!” Vivienne exclaimed, kissing Darcy effusively on both cheeks.


End file.
